This is to record my appreciation to the 65 representative signatories for your support, and to confirm that Petition 1552 will be presented to Guy Perricone, Treasurer and Chair of Council, Greg Andrews, CEO and Clerk of the Foundation, and Catherine McGuinness, Trustee at a meeting to be held Tuesday, March 7th at Middle Temple in the City of London. I am unexpectedly unable to attend myself and happily Professor Keith Bowen, FRS, FREng, has kindly agreed to lead the presentation. Professor Bowen will lead a distinguished delegation on behalf of Campaign 1552 involving The Very Revd Dr John Arnold, OBE/Donation Governor; Heather Goodare, MA and HG (1948-49); David Arnold, MA, former Headmaster Collyer's School (1983-1999)/Donation Governor/formerAlmoner; and Richard Poulton MA, former Headmaster Christ's Hospital (1986-95)/Donation Governor. The thirteen members of the Council of Almoners then meets to debate Petition 1552 on March 17 2016 in London. We are especially appreciative of the wealth of knowledge, depth of experience and commitment to preserving the social ethos of Christ's Hospital, Sui Generis, which our delegation will bring to their task. We thank them for their willingness to bring their thoughtfulness, resolve and their time to this particular discussion on the mandate and role of Christ's Hospital in 21st century UK. We wish them well. In the meantime, we have a question for you all on the Unofficial CH Forum. We are wondering how possible it might be to increase our Signatories from the current 65 to a full 100 before the March 7th meeting, or no later than March 17th when the Council of Almoners will be meeting to discuss, as we understand it, the Governance proposal and the Full Fee Paying proposal to cap FFP admissions to <10% in a manageable timescale. We do realise this is a big ask but if you feel able to consider signing Petition 1552 we would be enormously grateful. We appreciate the many emails (~1000) we have received over the past three months, your thoughtful comments and letters of support. In particular it has been a great opportunity to re-connect and make new connections around the world within the CHOBA community in the honourable and responsible service of Christ's Hospital!

Thankyou for keeping us fully briefed on your progress. I have trawled back through this thread but have been unable to find information on how we can add our names to this petition. Have I missed a link?

davidtaplin wrote:The aim now is to set-up an online Petition 1552 and Katharine is helping.

I would like to sign the petition. I would prefer to sign on paper. I don't in general sign on-line petitions, which have become very much devalued. It is too easy to set them up. There are thousands of them, and they can get thousands of signatures, with nobody knowing whether the signatories are genuine and serious. Politicians ignore on-line petitions by the score every day.

I'm sure none of that would be true of the 1552 petition, but I still have some reluctance. I wouldn't like to put anybody else off, though, and I will sign on-line if that's how it has to be.

John, you don't have to sign an online petition that is open to all and sundry.

I replied to a personal email from David when he first posted about his petition last month. I followed this up with a personal letter in support of the petition to the Clerk sent by snail mail to Horsham, and by email. These letters are going to be available to the Court of Almoners before their meeting. As far as I know, they are not available to all and sundry.

I hope this will reassure you that this is not the same as many of the online petitions.

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

I would like to support this admirable cause and hope that this notification will be sufficient.
I very much regret that other subjects somehow intruded into this so important subject and must take some responsibility for this.
I should have started a new topic which I tried to do recently on Sergeant Usher which somehow was included in the Parents' thread.

Kit, please email David, the link is in Julian's post just above yours. The organisers, David Taplin and Graham Riches would like to record house and years at CH for all Old Blues, also your email address so that you can be informed of the result of the petition.

Last edited by Katharine on Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!